The Reserve Bank on Tuesday said that domestic scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) will have to allocate at least 25% of the total number of branches to be opened during a year to unbanked rural centres (Tier 5 and Tier 6 centres).
"There is a need to step up the opening of branches in rural areas so as to improve banking penetration and financial inclusion rapidly and meet the targets set out for providing banking services in villages with a population over 2,000," the Reserve Bank said in its monetary policy statement for FY 12.
SCBs have opened, on an average, about 20% of the total number of new branches in Tier 5 and 6 centres in the last two-years, it said.
The financial inclusion plans (FIPs) of banks indicate that they propose to use banking correspondents (BCs) in a big way to reach out to unbanked villages.
However, there is a need for opening of more brick and mortar branches, besides the use of BCs, the RBI said.
This is needed to achieve the goal of bringing banking services to the identified 72,800 villages by March 2012 and thereafter progressively to all villages over a period of time, the apex bank said.
Accordingly, domestic SCBs are being mandated "to allocate at least 25% of the total number of branches to be opened during a year to unbanked rural (Tier 5 and Tier 6) centres," the RBI said.
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